Up until seeing Alfred Hitchcock’s only musical (!) Waltzes from Vienna [M] (1934), I’d never heard of Jessie Matthews, a star of British cinema during the thirties.

Prior to Tom Thumb (1958), Matthews had in fact not appeared in a film since Candles at Nine (1944), a mystery satire that reportedly harmed her career like some kind of death blow. If her C.V. bears any cursory reading, prior to WWII she made almost a film a year, with a pause in 1938 until the war started to close in 1944. After a handful of films, she then vanished from movies.

VCI’s first Matthews film – First a Girl (1935) – kind of came out under the radar, but it’s perhaps her best-known work for North Americans not because they’ve seen it, but because it was a British remake of the German film Viktor und Viktoria (1933) which formed the basis for Blake Edwards classic comedy Victor Victoria (1982). I’ll have a review of the Brit remake title later, but I’ve jumped to the latest release from VCI, the extremely odd British take on the American screwball comedy Climbing High[M] (1938), directed by The Third Man’s Carol Reed. Yes, him. Co-starts include Michael Redgrave, and Alastair Sim as ‘an ugly man.’

Tied to that review is Friday the Thirteenth [M] (1933) – not a horror film, but a great little drama where a tragic bus ride is shown first, and we’re then shown the private moments of the riders leading up to the accident, not knowing who survived until the end. Great cast, direction, script, and memorable performances by some wonderful character actors including a younger-ish Edmund Gwenn and fast-talking Max Miller. The film’s actually available as a free download from Archive.org, and is worth your time.

The next roster of Matthews titles coming from VCI are There Goes the Bride (1932), Good Companions (1933), and one I’d really love to see, The Man from Toronto (1933). See, I live in Toronto, and whenever my city – currently governed by the worst mayor in its history – is noted in an older film, I’m curious.

I don’t expect any location footage (that would be amazing), but it is about a man from Toronto who must marry pronto! Early CanCon material also appears in Climbing High: Matthews’ honor is ‘defended’ by her brother (Torin Thatcher, with hair!) after he arrives fresh from cutting timber in Canada.

Because that’s what we do up here. We cut wood, woo women to Toronto, and have snow.

Yeah! Toronto!

Coming next: a podcast interview with John Piscitello, composer of the documentary No Place on Earth (2012), and thereafter, a review of Twilight Time’s Blu-ray edition of John Carpenter’s Christine (1983).

In 1935, Michael Powell directed 7 films, and The Phantom Light (1935) is among the few of his early quota work to make it to DVD. For North Americans familiar with his more daring artistic experiments with Emeric Pressburger (such as The Red Shoes, or Black Narcissus)…

Based on the still-unsolved Flannan Isle Mystery in which three lighthouse keepers vanished from an isolated isle without a trace in 1900, Joe Bone and Celyn Jones’ script unravels like a classic thriller in which isolation + greed drives men mad…

Whether Pearl S. Buck’s first screenplay required heavy work by Claude Binyon isn’t known, but the author of The Good Earth (published in 1931, and made into a film in 1937 by MGM) reportedly wrote China Story around 1950…

A whydunnit transposed to a WWII military courtroom in India, this adaptation of Howard Fast’s novel deals with a U.S. lieutenant facing the death penalty after shooting a British colleague in cold blood…

Written during his busiest period (1968-1970), Quincy Jones’ score for John and Mary was quite sparse, leaving obligatory space for the film’s myriad dialogue exchanges and source music, but the score is memorable for being atypical of the material Jones was writing at the time: action comedies (The Italian Job, The Hell with Heroes), comedies (Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice,Cactus Flower), and the funky style of They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!

For some soundtrack fans, it was a bit of surprise to learn the composer of pioneering synth scores had begun his career with large orchestral scores for John Boorman’s Excalibur (1981) and Jim Henson’s The Dark Crystal (1982)…

The first film in the enduring franchise gave John Powell the perfect opportunity to write what remains both his definitive action sound, and the definitive action score of that decade, blending large orchestral sounds with layers upon layers of electronics…

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